


The Test

by Tammany



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Gen, Love, M/M, Putting God to the Test
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 14:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20065522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: This is another "what are the results of the aftermath" story. Between Adam's interference and God's failure to smite or resist Adam's interference, there's a lot to wonder about in regards to what Crowley and Aziraphale face moving on.This grew out of that question...and the immediate logical implications of what would be involved in trying to find out.So.This gets rather angsty, as theology, logic, and love crash into each other in a three-way auto wreck. IMO canon backs the choices I have our Boys make and the conclusions they come to. But--it's arguable. As is my own conclusion about the status of those involved in the divine scheme of things.





	The Test

Aziraphale found his demon in the little, geometric Elizabethan garden outside St. James Piccadilly. Crowley squatted on his heels, elbows on his knees, studying the red brick church designed by Sir Christopher Wren centuries before.

“Testing your endurance?”

The demon flicked him a glance over his glasses. He grunted—a neutral sound, neither confirming or denying. The sound mainly seemed a faint admission that Crowley knew he’d been addressed. No more than that.

Aziraphale, never so lean or lithe as the demon, considered attempting a similar fluid squat, and concluded he would need a hoist to get back up—assuming he didn’t fall on his bum just by trying. He glanced around, found the nearest park bench (all teak, handsome and sturdy), and miracled it close. He sat down gingerly.

The entire garden was consecrated ground, part of the church itself from the point of view of blessings. Crowley wasn’t squirming and twitching from the burn or the heat. But Aziraphale honestly wasn’t sure why. Perhaps the garden was less concentrated than the church proper? Yet he could feel the intense glow of sanctity all around him. As an angel the feeling was pleasant—but it was intense. Yet Crowley didn’t move, didn’t squirm, didn’t flinch.

“Dear?”

“Mmm.”

“What are you doing?”

Yellow eyes blinked behind black glasses. Then, softly, the demon said, “Tesssssting a hypothesisssssssss.”

Aziraphale blinked in his own turn. He re-crossed his ankles and his hands shifted from left over right to right over left. He considered. “Testing?”

“Yesssssss.”

“A hypothesis?”

“Y’ssssssssss.”

The truth? Aziraphale didn’t like the sound of that. Not here, on consecrated ground, with his personal, beloved, dearest demon tampering with sanctity. They’d only just survived the Apocalapse by the skin of their teeth. Why tempt…Her…to have second thoughts? “Apocalapse, the Director’s Cut” worried Aziraphale. God was so blessedly ineffable.

“Wouldn’t you rather not?” he asked, attempting chipper optimism. “The Ritz is just down the way, and more good Japanese food than I can start to count. Nobu. Sake no Hana. Even a Benihana, if you’re feeling like a bit of Japanese panto with your teppanyaki.”

The demon shook his head and continued to stare at the church.

It was a handsome little church. Smaller than, say, St. Paul’s. Red brick and white trim and an urban feel quite different from white marble and colonnades and a dome. Even this little walled garden spoke of a small, closed community of sensible, quiet-living souls.

It felt loved. Aziraphale wondered if his demon could feel that. He was so deaf to all that was loving and beloved in the world…

He tried not to think about that. It made him want to weep—and rage, and engage in fisticuffs with Herself. If Jacob could wrestle with God—why could not one of Her angels? For the sake of one of Her lost angels? Her castaways?

But Crowley wasn’t listening.

After a time, he sat down on the pavement and removed his boots and socks. He stood, then, pressing his feet against the concrete.

Aziraphale, surrounded by the sanctity of the space, told himself that surely the concrete had been poured sometime after the area had first been blessed. That had to be why Crowley wasn’t jigging and bouncing like—oh, who was that charming dancer from back in the previous century? Right. Ray Bolger. He wasn’t dancing around like Ray Bolger.

(In the inner sanctum of his spirit, a spindle-thin, elegant figure began to dance, and Aziraphale's spirit sighed, “Of course. That’s why you always liked Bolger…” The first whisper of an earworm began, singing “Once in love with Crowley, always in love with Crowley…” In the outer garden, he blushed…)

“Your feet,” he said to the demon. “Don’t they hurt?”

The demon shrugged, face still and focused. “Bit. Not so much.”

Aziraphale, not for the first time, wished Crowley were not a demon—a strange, private demon as likely to lie about private things as come right out and say them.

“Let me look,” he said, covering concern with tart sanctimony.

The demon ignored him, instead bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, and flexing his long toes.

Aziraphale studied long feet, long toes, with heart-breaking fascination. When was the last time he’d seen Crowley’s toes, he wondered. Rome? Japan?

And such beautiful toes—as thin as their owner, straight, sprinkled with a faint dusting of fine dark hairs between the knuckles. How could an angel feel such swelling affection for toes? Unless, of course, he were a creating angel, working in God’s own design unit.

But Aziraphale was a Principality, no more. Highest of the low, greatest rank of the lowest sphere—and in odd ways not all that great there, for even Michael and Gabriel and Uriel and Sandalphon outranked him, and they were only archangels. But they were also generals of the Host, and over the centuries that had come to eclipse Aziraphale’s role as guardian of rulers and lands and even of the great, spinning world.

He was a guardian—but a guardian who gave away his sword. He’d always known in his heart of hearts that God knew it, though he never admitted it to her, and certainly didn’t confess it to Gabriel or his lot. Better to admit it to, well…

To the Serpent in the Garden, as it happened. And the Serpent had looked at him with startled, admiring eyes, perhaps taking Aziraphale for a braver, bolder, more rebellious angel than Aziraphale knew himself to be.

He’d fallen in love with that look of admiration in those golden serpent eyes. Bonded like a fresh-hatched chick. He had adored the Serpent ever since—and upon such blasphemies was his poor, irrational life made.

“What are you doing?” he asked again, bleating a bit—afraid.

“Tesssting a hypothesissssss,” Crowley said again, growling. Then he started a purposeful, almost predatory march through the tiny garden to the church door.

“Wait! Don’t!” Fear caught in Aziraphael’s throat. “I gave you Holy Water once. I’ll—I get more if that’s what you want. It’s easy for me. I won’t get hurt. Just don’t…please, please, don’t put the Lord thy God to the test? Please?” The demon’s boots and socks stood empty on the pavement where he’d sat.

What if the demon never came back for them?

His demon paced steadily toward the church doors—then reached out and flung them wide, pausing in the gaping maw of the church beyond.

“I won’t have it,” Aziraphale raged, terror worse than ever. “I won’t. Please, Crowley, stop playing with death?” His voice shifted instantaneously from a roar of command to a croaking cry. “Please?”

His demon—his self-destructive demon, who played with fire. His demon who had questioned God’s decisions—and been outcast, with the rest of the Fallen. His demon, who was fool enough to approach a Principality on the ramparts of Eden, on the day that Eve and Adam were expelled. His demon who spent the Millennia testing the patience and gullibility of Heaven and Hell alike—and tempting a minor Principality to do likewise. In so very many ways.

Crowley stepped into the church, and with a high-pitched squeak of despair Aziraphale raced after him, snatching up the boots and socks as he passed and clutching them to his chest.

“Please, God, please, God, please, God, you’ve damned him already, and cursed him a second time. Please, don’t hurt him, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He can’t know what he’s doing—you won’t tell him what he’s doing. You won’t tell any of us. It’s not fair. Please don’t hurt him for being as you made him? If you do…” the litany in Aziraphale’s heart paused as he searched for any threat—any at all—grand enough to challenge God’s own will. “If you hurt him, I’ll—I’ll—I’ll never talk to you again.”

The two things he loved in all the world, he thought, in tears. Why did they pit him against them? Why did they put him to the test?

Crowley was walking slowly down the center aisle of the church nave, headed for the altar. Aziraphale couldn’t decide if each step hurt him or not—it was too deliberate. He could be in agony, and ignoring it in rage and determination. He could be fine, and simply taking his own sweet, furious time approaching the Table of the Lord.

The eastern wall above the altar held six great stained glass windows—modern, Aziraphale thought, a bit blankly. Replacements for windows lost during the war? Yes. Three lights below, centering on the crucifixion of Christ, who hung almost triumphant on a Tau cross. Above, three more. The largest light showed Christ enthroned, with the white dove of the Holy Spirit descending.

To the left, though, Aziraphale could feel the mad glory of blessed water—a font, in the northwest corner.

“No, no, don’t feel it, don’t sense it. Leave it, dear. Please, leave it alone…”

But the demon stopped, and stood. His head turned, slowly. He turned to head back down the aisle.

“No.” Aziraphale stepped forward to block him, still clutching boots and socks tightly, his fingers tangled in loose laces, his face sincere and pink and desperate. “Please, dear Crowley… Stay with me. I’m—I know I’m not enough to make up for eternity. But I can’t—I can’t bear to have you kill yourself like that.”

Crowley gave him a frustrated look, and, in his most Scottish inflections, said, “An can’ ye no see I’m standing on hallowed ground, angel, and not hoppin' about lik’ a foul toad?”

“What?”

“Look, angel.” He lifted his feet. They remained slim and long, with long toes, and tender pink soles that never saw the sun.

“No burns,” he pointed out. “Last time I had shoes on, an’ it was still blisters for a week.”

“So—what? You think you’re….”

“Just wondering. Adam reset things. Herself seems to have had her own thumb on the scales. Got to wondering if we’d have survived even if we hadn’t switched.” His tones were returning to a less inflected English. He looked around the church. “Nice place. Haven’t seen one from inside….well. I’d say ‘ever’ but for that one I blew up for you. But never had much chance to take a nice, long look.” He glanced around, then pointed to the northeast corner with a jerked of his chin. “Font’s over there.”

“Please…leave it alone. Crowley, it’s not like you can dip your finger in and pull it back if it’s burnt.”

A drop—the smallest drop—and his demon would dissolve, screaming his life out, until he was exed out of reality entirely, only a faint memory left. And one angel crying.

“Gotta,” Crowley said. Then, emotion darkening his tones, pain showing, he said, “How will I know She’s forgiven me if I don’t test her, angel? How can I be sure it’s real, if I don’t have enough faith to risk it all?”

“I forgive you.” Aziraphale’s voice asked, without words, if his forgiveness might not suffice…

“Good—that’s good to know, angel. Been a problem for you, I know that. But…” He dodged left, then right, and was around the angel and darting for the font.

Aziraphale raced after, still clutching his bundle of boots. “No…What if she doesn’t? Who cares? Why care? I don’t care—Crowley—Serpent. Dearest… _I love you. _Don’t die.”

There it was, all laid out, stark. I love you. Don’t die.

Crowley paused, and looked back. He looked at the font.

It was a beautiful thing. Light from the doors Aziraphale had left open shone on creamy marble. The fat, curved bowl rested at the top of a pedestal carved in the form of the Tree of Knowledge. Adam stood to one side. Eve, with her apple on the other. Twining through the lowest branches of the tree, among the polished leaves, was the serpent.

“Look, angel,” Crowley said, amused. “It’s me.”

Aziraphale came behind. He put down the boots at last. He approached his demon and stood in front of him.

“What does it get you even if you know? How much more free are you? How much safer? Crowley, She remains ineffable, and whatever story she’s telling, it keeps ending in death and damnation for too many. Please, stay with me.”

“I just want to know, love.” His eyes were gold and serpentine. He opened out his jet wings. “Look. I’m still Fallen. That hasn’t changed. I don’t know what I am.”

“You’re Crowley.”

“Who asks questions, angel. Who has always asked questions.”

“One day they’re going to kill you.” The anger snapped forth, all the hurt and fear driving it like a lance at the demon. “Can’t you stop?”

Crowley said nothing—and didn’t need to. The answer was obvious—if he stopped asking questions, he would no longer be Crowley.

Aziraphale sighed, and seemed to wilt. His head drooped. He stepped forward, close—closer, and took the demon’s hands.

He kissed the back of one.

The back of the other.

He looked up, and kissed Crowley’s mouth, once. Gently.

Then he stepped away.

“With my blessings, then. Better with them than without them. God’s peace, my demon.”

He had surrendered.

Crowley’s face shifted through a thousand-thousand feelings, failing to say a thousand-thousand truths. At last he could only look away.

He turned, and approached the font. He held his hands over the water, the way a hobo in an alley in winter holds his hands over a trash-can fire.

“I can feel the blessing, angel,” he whispered. “You have no idea how long it’s been since I could feel a blessing.” He didn’t look back, but added. “You were all the blessing I had.”

“Not blessing enough.”

What could either say? Even love wasn’t able to make up to the Fallen for loss of God’s blessing—the eclipse of God’s grace.

He let his hands drop—a fraction of an inch at a time. His shoulders shouted his fear—and his hope. The arch of his wings, still black as midnight, cherished the font.

There was no sound but the ragged sound of an angel refusing to cry—refusing to take one jot of courage from his demon.

Just short of the water, Crowley stopped, unable to choose.

“Angel…what are you going to do if I’m wrong?”

“If you die?”

“Yeah.”

Aziraphale sighed. “I don’t know, dear. It would be quite dramatic to say I’d follow you. It would be more likely I’d Fall—or at least try to force Her to throw me down. Then rage at her forever more. Or—I might be able to let you go in peace. I don’t know.”

There was another long pause. Then Crowley sighed, too.

“Stubborn damned bastard, me. Hate leaving a question unanswered. But—“ He stepped back, and drew in his wings, and stuck his hands into his shallow, stylish pockets. “Can’t do it to you, angel. Not to you.” And he walked down the cross-aisle and came to lean his forehead against the crown of the angel’s hair. “I love you, you fool bastard. For you—I’ll let it go.”

Aziraphale said nothing, but he wrapped his arms around his demon and clung tight, silent tears slipping down his face. Crowley wrapped his own arms around the angel’s shoulders, and rocked him tenderly.

“There, there, lad. My angel. Shhhh. I’ll let it go.”

In their own tiny world, the two failed to note the sooty, dappled pigeons that fluttered in the door of the church. Nor did they note when one of a particularly dawn-like grey and pearl opened its wings and flew again, to dip over the font—and flip a fine spray of water that pattered out wide. Only when it hit did they jump, caught between normal surprise and dawning terror.

And then they realized they were alive.

“Oh.” Who knew which said it—or if both did. “Oh.”

“Maybe the priest didn’t bless this batch yet?” Crowley said, wiping a freckle of water from Aziraphale’s nose.

“Maybe,” Aziraphale said. Then, tasting the glory of the blessing still there, said, “No. No—it’s blessed. Brighter now than when we came in, as if God added an extra dose.” He looked up at his love. “I think it’s safe to say she’s forgiven you, love. For now.”

“For now,” Crowley agreed, and grinned wickedly. “But, then, she’s ineffable. She could always change her mind.”

“Or write a different story.”

“Or…not.”

They smiled at each other. Then Aziraphale said, in sudden curiosity, “I wonder if I could survive hellfire…” And then he squalled at a quick smack upside the head from his demon. “What’s that for?”

“You’re not testing it, angel. Not unless She finesses it like She did now. Not unless you want me storming heaven if you die, because no way am I behaving properly. I may be forgiven, but I’m no angel.”

Which, Aziraphale thought, was highly debatable. But they could always save the debate for another day. He smiled, and took Crowley’s hand, and walked home to the little Soho bookstore together, and forgot Crowley’s boots and socks entirely, which left the church charwoman with a puzzle to solve…

But made no other difference in the grand scheme of things.

And that, just in case you are wondering, is why it’s always a good idea to feed the birds (tuppence a bag!) whether it be outside St. Paul’s or St. James Piccadilly, or anywhere else. Sometimes a pigeon is a God passing unheralded, and it’s always a nice idea to keep on Her good side.


End file.
